Nowadays, the price of bread in Italy has increased astronomically. That’s why housewives—in small towns of Sicily, at least—have started to bake bread at home more frequently, resuming the recipes that were passed on from one generation to the other. Actually, the only way of learning to make pane di casa, a hard crust type of bread, was by watching and gaining experience in baking it because everything was mixed “by eye;” no one had a written or accurate recipe. No less, every family made a kind of bread that was unique, not mistakable with any others. A good bread baker made a good wife and was a staple to the home.

The typical frugal dinner on weekdays in the Sicily of the post-war years usually consisted of vegetables and olives grown in house gardens and eggs laid by the chickens that peasants had in their barnyards. This regime of austerity made bread very important to accompany meals to fill up the stomach—“pi ghinchiri a panza.”

The husband and male members of the family that worked on the crops usually stayed away from home for a week since the cultivated area was far from the town center. It was so far that it was only reachable by donkey or by many hours of walking. It was a woman’s duty to have ready-baked bread for their return home. If the men of the family came back unexpectedly, she would ask a neighbor to borrow a loaf of bread. But she knew that her family members would notice right away that the character and flavor of it would be different than her own. The bread was made using la farina di grano duro (hard-wheat flour), yeast and water. The dough was put on a flat piece of wood surmounted by a thick stick, called sbrivula.